I have never heard of them, but just visited their website. I was shocked at what an ugly, unprofessional looking website it was considering that they offer a computer science major. It reflects very poorly on them, I'd say.

According to the site, their first classes started in Fall 2005. They are located in an area that I had also never heard of - El Sherouk - which they say is 37 kms out from Cairo on the road to Ismailia. Not a grand location, but then to me the reason to be in Egypt is to live in Cairo.

So, there is some background on the place in case anyone is interested. It is likely too new to have any posters here, but perhaps Stoth1972 has heard something?

BTW... this is a British only place. The employment page lists openings for Egyptians and "UK" openings. The pay is in Sterling... (good news)

Yes, I wondered about the UK bit as well.
It would help if they would come straight out and say (like the British Council) that only British or Egyptian passport holders can be appointed due to Egyptian Ministry rules etc. (if that is the case) This would save a lot of time filling in a long on-line application! I hate those things, though I suppose they do standardize things to some extent.
Would also be interested to see what 'competitive salary' means exactly
i.e approximate range.......... ?? Any ideas anyone?

I guess that they want you to guess the reality from the website. Is there a rule in the UK that you could NOT specify this? The Egyptian Ministry wouldn't be the one to make a rule like this. AUC is not required to hire only Americans.

I know that American companies that recruit for openings in Saudi can not specify the sex of the teacher and expect that people 'know' that if it says to teach men that only men need apply. Some places even interview the women and don't inform them that they are not eligible.

My former employer in Jeddah regularly recruited in the USA. When they received an application from a feamle they interviewed them and neglected to inform them that they did not employ females. A charade !

It is not really a charade as that rather gives the idea that the recruiters are doing it all for laughs, but in the US, by the laws covering job recruitment, they open themselves up for lawsuits if they do not interview them. AMIDEAST had problems over MLI recruitment when it was restricted to men. It is ridiculous, but there is no exemption in the law for companies that are recruiting for foreign governments with different laws.

They advertised a few weeks ago in jobs.ac.uk, UK equivalent I suppose of the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the major source of academic vacancies amongst people in UK HEIs.

A university in the UK, called Loughborough University, seems to have sizeable involvement in the main curricula, currently oriented it seems towards science and engineering.

A couple of the Egyptian founders/financiers of the project, I think, have some connection as previous students of that University (would need to be confirmed).

I have some recollection of when it first kicked off. Loughborough University were initally involved in the recruitment (as well as the curricula). British Council were inevitably heavily involved in some of the start up (particularly, I would assume, on the ELT side ), and UK figureheads - Blair and Prince Charlie - were there for some of the initial ceremonial stuff.

In my naivete perhaps, nonetheless, in this day and age I wouldn't have thought that they would want to prevent good teachers from other countries from working there, though it's obviously got a British bias and going for UK uni equivalence/accreditation.

I would assume that, as seems to happen in such situations in many international situations, teachers employed in the EFL/EAP side of things will be paid far less than those recruited as 'academic-experts' in the course majors. They have been looking for lecturers etc. in subject areas and I'm sure would need to pay at least UK-equivalent salaries (plus benefits) to get them. I doubt that they would be prepared to pay UK-equivalent salaries to entice common-or-garden EAP teachers already employed in UK tertiary situations (even though the salaries are not necessarily that good in such situations).

As so often is the case, there will quite likely be baffled surprise when, down the line, they discover that there's a mismatch between what lecturers (with limited overseas experience in EFL situations) expect from students coming from the Foundation year and what is the achieveable reality in EFL situations.

This place would be well advised to get their advice in the ELT area from The American University in Cairo which has been doing just this for many years working with the same student body group. But since AUC probably wouldn't want to help out a competitor - - the long term people at the BC there should know the game.

I can tell you that AUC pays a very competitive salary (competitive with the Gulf) and benefit package for Americans with a portion in dollars and a portion in Egyptian pounds - certainly better than I could earn as an ESL teacher in the US - even with a rare contract with benefits. Although most of their teachers are either American or Egyptian, there are normally a few experienced native speaker teachers from other countries. The key here is 'experienced' and the people they hire know what they will be seeing in the classrooms of the Middle East.

This new place would help themselves out considerably by doing the same thing. The vast majority, if not all of their EFL teachers, should have experience teaching in the English foundations courses of the Middle East. It could help them to avoid the common disasters of the first years at these new places.

Loughborough is a pretty good university, especially for sport, in the UK. I have no doubt they will pay well. Shorouk City (lots of different spellings) is maybe about half an hour from the city centre. One of the nicer parts of Cairo in that it is half desert! I haven't been to the Uni itself (just drove past it) but I would certainly give it a lot of consideration.

A half hour from the city center??? In the middle of the night maybe... For most of the day it can take you a half hour to get a a fraction of the distance to where the uni is. I've had it take a half hour to get to Zamalek and I could see it from the city center. As I understand, this is further out than the airport, yes?